


going home

by imnotanironwall



Category: Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)
Genre: Blood, Post-Kingdom Hearts III, Recompletion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-06
Updated: 2021-01-06
Packaged: 2021-03-17 10:14:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28598271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imnotanironwall/pseuds/imnotanironwall
Summary: Elrena knew better than to hope. The keyblades that covered the ground of the Keyblades’ Graveyard were proof enough.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 22
Collections: Kingdom Heals





	going home

Larxene hadn’t minded being a nobody. Though she had no recollection of her past the first time, being reminded of who she was that second time had been painful, and she had given her heart to whoever would take it without hesitation. Yes, of course, she didn’t want to become a puppet herself, but for a while, it had been the most tantalizing option when all her pain and loneliness had come back to her. 

Larxene hadn’t minded being a nobody. And though nobodies _could_ feel pain, she hadn’t realized how lessened that pain was. What a blessing being a nobody had been. 

  
  


It’s the pain that wakes her up, coursing through her neck to her hips. She was almost sure she could have felt it down to her toes if she could feel her legs at all, but her entire lower half was numb; _completely_ and _totally_ numb. And maybe it was for the better, for the time being, if the pain in her side was any indication of what was to come. 

Through gritted teeth, she raised a hand to her face to shield herself from the blinding sun and slowly opened her eyes to the bright blue and pink sky of the early morning. She didn’t remember such vibrant colors from the Graveyard nor from the World that Never was, but she supposed she wouldn’t wake up there anyway. That wasn’t where she had died the first time. Though, if she was being realistic -as much as she could through the whole more-than-disorienting experience of rebirth- she shouldn’t be able to wake up where she had died the first time. That world was no more. 

It shouldn’t be. 

It _shouldn’t_ . Yet, when she turned her head to assess her current position (down on the ground in the middle of dirt and dust) and her eyes laid on the half-timbered walls and collapsed purple roofs, she couldn’t deny that it _was_. 

_Ah_ , she thought, because her tongue refused to cooperate. Her inner voice was nonetheless just as bitter. _Home_ . And how strange that sounded. _Home_ should be no more, and yet, here it was, here she was. What a weird turn of fate, if fate’s work this was, though she had a hard time believing so. _Maybe those losers did something to bring it back,_ she eventually thought. _Wouldn’t be the first time_. 

She rubbed one eye with dirt-covered fingers and sighed. Could have at least patched her up if that was their doing. What was she supposed to do, injured and alone in a shattered world? She must look so pathetic, laying on the ground, blood flowing through the broken cobblestones in the middle of, now, nowhere. 

She exhaled. Well, she wasn’t about to let herself die now. What a joke that would be. 

Fists clenched, she rolled on her good side and propped herself up on her elbows. She could barely feel her legs now, after staying still for a while, but it was just enough to push herself on her knees. If she _was_ back home, and what she remembered of her past wasn’t a massive hallucination, there was **one** thing she could do. 

She extended her arm forward and closed her eyes, willing her old keyblade to appear. 

Truly, she had little expectations. There was a reason none of that “keyblade legacy” bullshit had worked: there was no coming back from the Darkness once you had stepped as far as they all had. Their little treachery against the Organisation hadn’t been for world order, or whatever other crap she had been fed all her life, she realizes now: it was all selfish desires. 

She sighed, closing her fist around nothing. It wasn’t like her to _hope_.

  
  


_...Poof_.

 **_Thud_ **.

She lowered her gaze at the sound. 

Just in front of her, right under where her hand was seconds ago, laid her old keyblade. It wasn’t anything fancy like some of her old union comrades, nor like those losers, and definitely not like Lauriam. It was just a simple Starlight. _And it did its job just fine_ . She reached toward the keyblade and pulled it toward herself to properly look at the lightning charm attached to the handle, the only thing that would differentiate it from the hundreds of others. _It was really hers_. 

Maybe all wasn’t lost. 

She sat back on her heels and pointed her keyblade toward the sky as she concentrated on casting a _cure_ spell, as she had intended to do when she summoned the weapon. Almost immediately, she felt a warmth flow through her as green magic enveloped her body. Slowly, the wounds on her side and her temple closed, leaving only bruises and fresh scars behind. 

The throbbing in her head subsided almost instantly, her next breath was utterly painless and her vision was more clear than before. The spell was weak, she could feel that her magic hadn’t all come back to her (and to be honest, she had never been much of the healing type) but it was good enough for now. At least she wasn’t bleeding out onto the pavement anymore.

With renewed strength, she pushed herself onto her feet into a standing position, using her keyblade to ground herself and not inadvertently fall forward. That’d be unfortunate if she ended face-first onto the street and got a concussion that’d left her dead after struggling to _avoid exactly that_ . She sighed, pushing away strands of dirty hair from her face, now drenched with sweat. No way was she letting herself fade away in that disgusting state. _No way!_

She took a tentative step forward after a while, keyblade at the ready to catch herself, but it turned out she didn’t need it. She took a step, then another, and another, and another, and soon enough she was walking toward the center of town where she knew she’d be able to properly orient herself and find a place still standing up (or at least, one not about to collapse on her the moment she set foot into the building). 

As she moved forward, she took in the town around her. Most houses were badly damaged, if not fallen; the streets were wrecked as if an earthquake had hit, cobblestone broken in several places, the ground uneven and bumpy. The hills that could be seen far away, in the past covered in colorful flowers, were but a heap of greenish dirt contrasting against the bright sky. The clocktower that once loomed over Daybreak Town was nowhere to be seen either, as if it had simply… _disappeared_. 

Soon enough, she reached the main square where the fountain was, still standing in the middle of the torn landscape. She took a break there, sitting on the edge and breathing in. She may have healed herself, for the most part, but she could feel the toll on her body that being recompleted and then using a weapon she hadn’t wielded in years came with. She was beyond exhausted. 

  
  


Being alone after all this time was a peculiar experience, she realized after a few minutes. As far as she remembered, she had never truly been alone. When she first became a keyblade wielder, leaving her family behind, she immediately joined a union and was assigned her Chirithy. Then, when she thought all was over for her, she woke up to a new ~~family~~ purpose. She had Lauriam, Marluxia then, by her side even when she did not remember their shared past. 

How odd that was, _fate_. 

She laid on the edge of the fountain, eyes cast to the sky. It was unlike her to be so deep in such thoughts, reminiscing of the past; not doing anything to change the status quo. 

She frowned, stopping her self-consciousness just as it emerged. Something was weird with the landscape above her. Though she vividly remembered the colors of daybreak constantly filling the sky until nightfall, she did not remember the sky to be so… static. She propped herself on her elbows and squinted. Yes, the clouds definitely did move back then. Where was the wind? 

She looked to the side, to the fountain and the water within - or, at least, what was left of it - and indeed, the water was just as still as the clouds. As if there was no flow, no current even though she knew that the water used for the fountains came from and went back to the canals. It was as if it had all been frozen in place. Her frown deepened.

Strange. This was all very strange. What had really happened here? _Where_ was she really?

“Elrena?”

She jumped, her head immediately turning toward whoever had managed to sneak past her usually keen senses. She paid no mind to the sound her neck made, nor the pain that shot through her spine at the movement. Instead, her eyes quickly scanned the square in search of that voice. That voice that knew her _name_.

“Elrena! It’s really you!”

 _That voice_. 

She lowered her gaze to the ground at her feet and jumped again at the ball of gray and black fur looking up at her. Instinctively, she opened her hand and fingers to summon her knives, but nothing materialized. 

“Chirithy?” She asked then as she recognized the creature and its blue cape, made of the same material as her out-of-fashion jacket. The dream eater bounced in its spot, nodding vigorously before she bent down and tentatively ruffled its cheeks to make sure it was real, and not just a hallucination from the pain in her body. As she did so, she noticed the patches of purple fur. “Honey, what--”

“Elrena!” 

As if it was an invitation, the Chirithy hopped in her laps and buried its face in her stomach as its short arms hugged her, unaware of the bruises there. She winced as the pain hit her once more but shook her head to concentrate on more urgent matters. “Hey, your fur--” she started, her voice uncharacteristically quiet and worried. “What happened? And why are you here?”

The spirit audibly sighed as it properly sat down on her laps. “I don’t know.” It stayed quiet for a beat, eyes looking down at the ground. They glistened wetly in the faint light of the day. “You went into that pod and never called me. I- I couldn’t reach you, like… like you had forgotten? And then I started getting more and more purple fur like a _nightmare_ , which meant your heart had fallen to darkness. But it stopped before I completely transformed! And I heard your voice, I could feel you close. So I searched for you, and here we are!”

“The pod… That’s right, I remember.” She scratched her cheeks as she thought. “Then why am I back here?” 

“I don’t know.” Chitihy hanged its head low again, paws fiddling together. “There’s someone else that came back, a long time ago. And now they’re stuck here.”

“Someone else? Lauriam?”

Chirithy shook its head. “Mhm, no. A girl.”

Elrena jumped to her feet, stumbling forward as the dream eater slipped from her laps as she did so. She raised a hand to her forehead, her head spinning and her vision turning black with the sudden motion, but she didn’t lose a single second, turning toward her spirit companion. “Where is she? Bring me to her.”

Elrena knew better than to hope. Yet, knowing another person, a _girl_ , had come back here, she felt herself filled with the distinct feeling of _hope_. There weren’t many girls that could come back here, of that she was sure. After all, even though she had not taken part in the war itself, she knew the other wielders that once inhabited this town wouldn’t be able to come back. The keyblades that covered the ground of the Keyblades’ Graveyard were proof enough. 

As she followed her Chirithy through the dilapidated houses and ruined streets, she brought her hand to her chest and breathed in. What would she tell her, once long ginger hair filled her sight and turquoise eyes looked up to her? It’s not like they had been friends. She had wanted to, she knows in the deepest part of her heart, to get to know her and spend some time with this girl that laughed shyly and extended her hand toward anyone who needed it. Yes, she had found Lauriam instead, but she would have met him, eventually, if she had been confident enough to take that hand in hers, to feel soft skin against her own and finally be able to call that girl a _friend_.

She sighed, stopping in front of a dark brown door. It was plain and old, but it seemed to have escaped the fate of so many in the war. The house was untouched, the two-story building standing without a scratch. The edges of the town had been spared from the battle, it seemed. 

“Here, this is where she lives,” Chirithy said, pushing the door open before Elrena could utter a word. “She’s usually out at this time.”

“Didn’t take you for the one to trespass.”

“She has a first-aid kit,” it replied as if that answer was all she needed to be allowed inside.

She huffed. Well, she did worse things for the Organisation. Besides, she _did_ need to get some proper treatments for her untreated wounds. Without a second thought, she stepped inside the house. 

The place was simple. If she didn’t know better she’d even think no one had stepped foot inside since the War, only the inexistent layer of dust on furniture spoke of a recent visitor. That struck her as odd, that the resident of this house wouldn’t decorate. As far as she remembered, Lauriam had told her his sister had always been fond of plants and greenery, always making a home of where they’d go since they were but children. Why wouldn’t she have done the same here?

She shook her head as doubt and dread filled the back of her mind, there were more urgent things to consider. Instead, she distracted herself by opening cabinets after cabinets until she found the first-aid kit her Chirithy had told her about. Though she was used to seeing bruises on her skin, she was not accustomed to the pain and the swelling that came with them. She definitely wasn’t used to the _painful_ beating of her heart against her possibly beaten chest. Being a Nobody for so long really had been a blessing in disguise, more so than she had expected. 

With a sigh, she let herself fall in a chair, after washing her hands in the kitchen, and rolled up her shirt to see the purple tint her skin had taken on her side. Carefully, she took some ointment and applied it to the tender area, gritting her teeth every now and then when her nails grazed against the bruise, marking the skin a vibrant red before returning to its bruised shade. 

“How come you didn’t disappear like the other Chirithy?” She asked to distract herself as she shifted to another bruised area. “Even if _I_ didn’t completely disappear, my heart did.”

The spirit looked up toward her for a second, staying silent, looking somewhere past her as if deep thoughts, before it turned its back to her and climbed on a chair as well, its feet dangling helplessly in the air as it used all its strength to haul itself on the seat. 

“I did,” it replied as it plopped on the chair and looked up at her with big round eyes. “I went to what we call the Final World. If a heart is gone, this is where we gather before we too disappear for good. But,” it looked down and touched its chest, “I could still feel your heart beating. Weak but alive, waiting to come back, so I decided to wait.

“And then you did, and so I came back to find you. But then you were gone again before I could really hear your voice. However, I knew you’d come back soon, so I waited here.”

“Mmh, you should have come with me. ‘Can’t begin to tell you how boring it was in the Organisation. Just waiting for _Saïx_ to bark orders after orders, urgh!”

“But you weren’t alone.”

She huffed, finishing up the bandage she had been putting around her arm before closing the first-aid kit. Chirithy was right, Lauriam had been there every step of the way, even if she hadn’t remembered him at first. “At least I wasn’t alone.” It hadn’t been all that bad, maybe, after all.

She sighed and got up to put the kit back. As she closed the cabinet and opened her mouth to ask one more thing to Chirithy, the front door flew open and a panting black-haired woman appeared, brown eyes shining in the afternoon light. The sight was like a slap to Elrena. She knew not to hope, she _knew_. Yet, as despair and disappointment filled her stomach, deep in her heart she could feel the excitement of adventure awaken slowly -- old purpose and the thrill of the search coming back to her like the touch of a long lost friend. 

The woman in the entryway passed a trembling hand through her hair and laughed, something weak but hopeful. “I know you.” After a beat, she added, “I’m not alone!”

With a jump in her step, she beelined for Elrena and immediately took one of her hands in hers. She smiled, something bright and familiar, like the morning sun above the flower fields. And though the gesture made Elrena cringe, the unbound joy felt comforting. It felt like _home_.

“I’m Skuld,” the girl said, “I need you to take me somewhere.”

**Author's Note:**

> Work for the [Kingdom Heals Zine](https://twitter.com/khealszine).
> 
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/imnotanironwall)


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